A tasty portrait in bleak-and-white of post-9/11 suburban blight, serving up lives of quiet desperation mired in a septic sea of pop-culture kitsch and lightly peppered with a perverse Tropicalia twist. Beware – despite the purposely clichéd cha-cha-cha at the ‘end’, the song has not yet ended…

Lyrics

Gimme a Break

Don’t gimme that about the UFOs
And don’t try and say your stupid magazine knows
Don’t gimme no science fiction
Just gimme a break

Hey goody-two-shoes, you think you’re so great
It figures you’d crack up your Vega like that
And go tradin’ it in for a Yugo
Gimme a break

Wandering wasted through the mall
Hosers, posers, pissants all
Singin’ gimme a break, gimme a break
Gimme a break

Can you tell, is this the Big Time?
Have I got it made?
Singing my songs in this penny arcade?
Makin’ love-eyes with the barflies
Gimme a break

Here in the New Jerusalem
You’re either one of us, or one of them
Either way, it’s ‘gimme a break, gimme a break…’

I’m relaxing in style on a king’s holiday
The cell finally died and my mind ran away
So don’t gimme no aggravation
On my Bermuda vacation
Just gimme a break
No pop culture teen sensations
Anesthetizing entire nations
Just gimme a break
No cable-TV masturbation
No ‘alternate-facts’ Fox fiction
Just gimme a break

Gimme a break, gimme a break, yeah yeah yeah
You gotta be kidding me
An illusion of truth
Adrift on the tide of a cartoon sea
You gotta be kidding me

Music & lyrics by George Wallace, © 1978/2017 Celestial Songs (ASCAP)